rene magritte

“Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”

-Rene Magritte, Belgian painter

The entirety of Koyomimonogatari Episode 1 juxtaposes two things side by side to create another thing entirely – the modus operandi of Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte. Visual imagery throughout the episode reinforces the Magritte influence, the most obvious reference pictured above: one of his more famous paintings, The Son of Man. Present throughout the episode is the stone from The Castle of the Pyrenees, the red drapery from in The Human Condition (among other works), and cut-outs of a blue sky found in the likes of The Happy Donor.